Quotes & Sayings About Happy Memories

I want to be so happy that bad memories aren't following me around like unwanted shadows. — Adam Silvera

happy people have often experienced as much adversity as those who are unhappy. What sets them apart is that they have the good sense to manage their memories in a way that enriches their lives. — Robin S. Sharma

My chest tightens: seeing him so upset breaks my own heart. 'Don't you ever wish you could make that bit go away?" I say, feeling angry at the past. 'That you could erase those painful memories, forget they every happened, just remember the happy times you had together?'
'You must never say that,' he reprimands sternly.
'But why not?' I look at him in surprise.
'Because it's the bad memories that makes you appreciate the good ones. Don't ever wish them away. it's like your nan always used to say, "You need both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow". — Alexandra Potter

I wanted to freeze the moment. Freeze it and jump inside of it and stay there until it melted into the warm, swishy liquid of happy memories. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

He asked me once what I wanted when I died, what I wanted out of life, and I told him I just wanted more happy memories than sad ones. — R. YS Perez

To be in your child's happy memories tomorrow, you must be in his life today. — Brenda Nixon

So what were you doing there?"

Here's the frustrating thing about Nate, one of those things that happy memories conveniently glossed over. A lot of times, you had to ask him a question more than once to get a straight answer. He loved to answer questions you'd never asked, or to answer a question with another question.

"Do I really have to answer that, Kyrie?"

See?

"Don't you trust me?"

See?! — Genevieve Pearson

The past doesn't exist. There is nothing to be sorry for. Today is when we start to live. Look ... look at the sea. The sea has no past. It is just there. It will never ask us to explain. The stars, the moon are there to light our way, to shine for us. What do they care what might have happened in the past? They are accompanying us, and are happy with that; can you see them shine? The stars are twinkling in the sky; would they do that if the past mattered? Wouldn't there be a huge storm if God wanted to punish us? We are alone, you and I, with no past, no memories, no guilt, nothing that can stand in the way of ... our love. — Ildefonso Falcones

It doesn't matter where you are in the world because it's about where you are up here,' she touched the side of her head lightly. 'It's about the other world I inhabit. The world of dreams, hope, imagination and memories. I'm happy up here,' she tapped her temple again and smiled, 'and because of that I'm happy up here too.' She held out her arms and displayed the countryside around her ... — Cecelia Ahern

One day I'll get a tattoo for you."
Warmth explodes in my chest, in awe that he would mark himself for me. "You don't have to."
"I will." His fingers trace my cheek and chills of pleasure run down my spine. "It's what I do. Each tattoo
represents the only happy memories I've had. And you, Rachel, you're the happiest. — Katie McGarry

For an instant Harry imagined his own Mum and Dad in Azkaban with the Dementors sucking out their life, draining away the happy memories of their love for him. Just for an instant, before his imagination blew a fuse and called an emergency shutdown and told him never to imagine that again. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life. — Banana Yoshimoto

I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice. — Katherine Jenkins

Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy.
But the memory of something painful does just the opposite. It retains its original shape, all bony fingers and pointy elbows. Every time it returns, you get a quick poke in the eye or jab in the stomach. The memory of being unhappy has the power to hurt us long after the fact. We feel the injury anew each and every time we think of it. — Cameron Dokey

And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories. — Amy Tan

One of my earliest memories is being backstage at 'Bran Nue Dae' in Darwin when I was about eight. It's such a fun, happy show and a real celebration of being Aboriginal ... it felt really great and achievable as a career. It all felt normal. — Shari Sebbens

In the life of a singer, it's not all triumphs and happy memories; there are days you have to go out there when it's the last thing you feel like doing. — Mireille Mathieu

I think the only answer is to live life to the fullest while you can and collect memories like fools collect money. Because in the end, that's all you have - happy memories. — Sarah Strohmeyer

In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the VERY long term, I know which will make better memories. — Bill Watterson

However like all little animals, it has to be nurtured and fed. It needs humour, interest, joy, love, compassion and a healthy bit of charity. It loves the unexpected and the unpredictable. It enjoys new challenges and experiences. Good wine makes it jump around a bit, good food makes it happy. Soft light make it dewy-eyed, happy memories light up its eyes. Good champagne is its preferred liquid. — Amos Van Der Merwe

What I have got from my childhood aren't toys, but memories. And happy memories are better than any toy. — River Phoenix

The things that you did with parents, whether it was spending every Sunday morning with your dad and eating French toast and watching Popeye, or decorating the Christmas tree with our mother - these are memories that help you be happy. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Well, yes. I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy. — Hayao Miyazaki

Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does? — Megan Hart

Why don't we keep track of the happy moments, so that afterward we will believe them? Is he the same man Was he really sincere? — Naguib Mahfouz

I think people prefer to remember happy times, well, happier times, and if they can't remember them, then to change the memories and make them happier. — Donna Leon

You were the hardest year of my life and I've never been so happy. What does that say about me? — Charlotte Eriksson

There's a brief moment when you first wake up, where you have no memories. A blissful blank slate, a happy emptiness. — Candace Bushnell

Running a multi-million dollar business can be frustrating at times, especially when someone does something I am not happy with. It might not even be their fault, but it is human nature to reach in an angry or heated way. However, I have learned an important and effective lesson. Rather than complain to my member of staff about their actions, I search my memory bank for things I find wonderful about them. This changes the energy around the issue instantly. People tend to live up to what you expect of them. — Vishen Lakhiani

I suggested that the system put all the potential offending [sexually abusive] alters in an internal prison. Jennifer said that would take too long. An alter popped out and said, "Just a minute," and then, after a brief silence, announced that they had "killed" all the offender alters; they were lying in the inside world dead, covered in blood! I was not very happy with such drastic measures, but accepted it for the interim, knowing I could rely on Jennifer to tell me if the risk recurred. I made a list of the "dead" alters.
The next morning Jennifer called; she had dreamed about sexually abusing a child. I asked her to look for more related memories before we met in the evening. She had to "reincarnate" all the dead alters to find the memories. (We already had a method for doing this, as some alters had previously experienced internal "death" in "disasters" in the inner world; when they were made new internal bodies, they became alive again.) — Alison Miller

Yes, memories do haunt. Memories of a happy past, in the expectation of a bleak future, in a sad present. - Anita — Nilesh Sakpal

Maybe it wasn't about the happy ending you and I didn't get, but the memories instead. — B.A. Wolfe

Making a beautiful, happy home is not about what we don't have or what we want to buy. It's all about what we do have, and how incredibly precious it all is. It's about how we spend the days we're given with this family of ours, and making the home we share a place our kids will love to describe to our grandchildren. It's about making our kids' memories delightful. — Gabrielle Stanley Blair

A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face.The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.
The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. When I thought of Manderley in my waking hours I would not be bitter. I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear. I should remember the rose-garden in summer, and the birds that sang at dawn.Tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up to us from the lawns below.
I would think of the blown lilac, and the Happy Valley. These things were permanent, they could not be dissolved.They were memories that cannot hurt. — Daphne Du Maurier

It's important to honor your ancestors. Bringing in a piece of furniture or an object you've inherited from a loved one not only honors the person who has passed but also brings the warmth of happy memories into your home. — Jeffrey A. Wands

I am not bitter because of what has happened. On the contrary. I am secure in knowing that what we had was real, and I am happy we were able to come together for even a short period of time. And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. And maybe, for a brief moment, you'll feel it, too, and you'll smile back, and savor the memories we will always share together.
I love you, Allie.
Noah — Nicholas Sparks

Death was a thief that always wore a mask. Accident, disease, stillbirths, old age, natural causes, war, murder. It existed in the shivering silence between tolls of a bell. It stole everything away while it left its mark, a dark knowledge that lingered at the back of smiling eyes, a hesitation between thought and action in times of danger, a heaviness that tunneled wormholes into happy memories. — Thea Harrison

Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product. I did not know this when I paid Eleanor Roosevelt $35,000 to make a commercial for margarine. She reported that her mail was equally divided. "One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation." Not one of my proudest memories. — David Ogilvy

We're sending you best wishes
And hope your day goes well
And that you'll find some memories
With stories you can tell
Of how you had a marvelous time
And those around you too
With fun and lots of laughter
And all this just for you..
Have a Very Happy Birthday — Janet Horne

Sisters, while they are growing up, tend to be very rivalrous and as young mothers they are given to continual rivalrous comparisons of their several children. But once the children grow older, sisters draw closer together and often, in old age, they become each other's chosen and most happy companions. In addition to their shared memories of childhood and of their relationship to each other's children, they share memories of the same home, the same homemaking style, and the same small prejudices about housekeeping that carry the echoes of their mother's voice ... — Margaret Mead

Perhaps all memories are inherently sad, even the happy ones, and should for that reason be avoided. Nostalgia is not so much the recollection of things past as the recollection of things you are no longer connected to. — Simon Wroe

In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs - perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present. — George Eliot

They waited awhile before lighting the candles; the gloom allowed the past to slip cozily into the present. But the memories were of a time that was gone and didn't overshadow the present. But the memories were vivid, and they made the freinds feel both young and old ... When Chrsitanne finally lit the candles and they saw one another clearly again, she was happy to see in the old faces of the others the young faces they had come across in their memories. we store our youth wihtin us, we can go back to it and find ourselves in it, but it is past
melancholy filled their hearsts, and sympahty, for one another and for themsleves. — The Weekend

Memories, sprang up in the most unusual ways, happy little gifts - as long as you didn't let the sadness creep in. — Suzanne Supplee

Don't be a storehouse of memories. Leave past, future and even present thoughts behind. Be a witness to life unfolding by itself. Be free of all attachments, fears and concerns by keeping your mind inside your own heart. Rest in being. Like this, your life is always fresh and imbued with pure joy and timeless presence. Be happy, wise and free. — Mooji

We all have rosy memories of a simpler, happy time- a time of homemade apple pie and gingham curtains, a time when Mom understood everything and Dad could fix anything. "Let's get those traditional family values back!" we murmur to each other. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous universe, everyone I know, and every celebrity I don't know, is coming out of the closet to talk about how miserable they are because they grew up in dysfunctional families. — Cynthia Heimel

I watched the rain stream across the window in little rivulets with sunshine coming through. For me, the rain has always been an emotional thing that makes me very happy. However, living with the fact that it will never last forever breaks my heart. The slow falling rain reminds me of the time when I and my father would just watch the rain until it stopped. It has been a warm memory ever since. — Manasa Rao

The only thing you can ever ask for is that, like what I was saying with memories, that somehow my music can fit into somebody's memory. If it can be the soundtrack to somebody's happy days then that would be amazing. — George Ezra

Throughout his life the memory of that happy day stayed locked secretly in (his) heart. — Brian Jacques

General Ivolgin, like all drunkards, was very emotional, and, like all drunkards who have sunk very low, he was much upset by memories of the happy past. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To read 'Happy Talk' is to crash a party as vivid and surreal as Felini's 8. It's the business of show business, the American dream, told by a chorus of Americans locked just outside of that dream, outside of the United States, relegated to expatriate status on the shores of Haiti. Melo paints a version of Haiti that's an interior landscape perhaps even more than an externalized place. This Haiti is a plan, a memory, a morphine-drip fueled dream out to bond its inhabitants forever. — Monica Drake

How many of us take the time to relive half a lifetime's worth of happy memories, cringeworthy failures, and unforgettable adventures together? How many of us get a chance to sit down and talk about the rough times we overcame in the past or to laugh about the stupid mistakes we made when we were young? — Joanna Gaines

The greatest joys of life are happy memories. Your job is to create as many of them as possible. — Brian Tracy

There were a story scripted on the wall, no words used though, just pictures, memories, from another world. Her happy place. — Stine Saugmann

Flesh does strange things to memory. Pain and joy both alter it. When you are happy, you remember things one way. When you are sad, you remember them another. And sometimes the flesh does not admit that memory is real at all or plucks false memories out of thin air. — Tanya Karen Gough

I am happy as happiness goes, for a woman who has so many memories and who lives the lonely life of an actress. — Lillie Langtry

If you were feeling sad right now and you recall a sad - or, a very happy memory from the past, it will be tinged with more sadness based on your current feeling. So we felt like that was actually on solid scientific ground . — Pete Docter

Life would not be the same ever again. I would laugh again like a happy man would, seemingly with few worries in the world, yes, for memories fade, even of a deed like the one I had committed. However, the knowledge was there, sad and lingering, and I knew I had lost something. — Alaric Longward

Golden years are passing by, Happy, happy golden years, Passing on the wings of time, These happy golden years. Call them back as they go by, Sweet their memories are, Oh, improve them as they fly, These happy golden years." Laura's — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am convinced that the greatest legacy we can leave our children are happy memories: those precious moments so much like pebbles on the beach that are plucked from the white sand and placed in tiny boxes that lay undisturbed on tall shelves until one day they spill out and time repeats itself, with joy and sweet sadness, in the child now an adult. — Og Mandino

If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you. — Martha Beck

The happiness of the South was very formidable. It was an almost invincible happiness. It defied you to call it anything else. Everyone was in fact happy. The women were beautiful and charming. The men were healthy and successful and funny; they knew how to tell stories. They had everything the North had and more. They had a history, they had a place redolent with memories, they had good conversation, they believed in God and defended the Constitution, and they were getting rich in the bargain. They had the best of victory and defeat. Their happiness was aggressive and irresistible. — Walker Percy

If you make children happy now, you will make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it. — Kate Douglas Wiggin

I consider myself British and have very happy memories of the UK. I spent the first 14 years of my life in England and never wanted to leave. When I was in Australia I went back to England a lot. — Naomi Watts

Where are the memories that held us together? Where are the dreams that were yet to come? I'm afraid to be happy. I shouldn't be happy. If I'm happy without you does that mean I've told you goodbye? — Donna Lynn Hope

When I look at my own children, Mrs Hargreaves, I think ... I think I know what childhood's for. It's to give us a bank of happy memories against future suffering. So when sadness comes, at least you can remember what it was to be happy. — John Logan

Our culture has the expectation that the memories of a happy childhood will somehow ground you and prepare you for adult life. But what about the memories that cut, that wound, that won't heal? — Laurie Halse Anderson

A daughter is the happy memories of the past, the joyful moments of the present, and the hope and promise of the future. — Bruce Barton

In the happiest of our childhood memories, our parents were happy, too. — Robert Breault

I attended the public schools.And I have happy memories and strong memories of those days and good memories of the good sense and the decency of my friends and my neighbors. — Samuel Alito

What I remember most about those days is how happy we all were. When I think back on my life growing up on Terra d'Amore, tides of warm memories wash over me like the waves of the Mediterranean. Our little farm, nestled in the hills and valleys of Montecalvo just outside Bologna, was idyllic. Indeed, it was an Italian paradise...a veritable heaven. — Giacomino Nicolazzo

When you get older, it feels like happy memories and sad memories are pretty much the same thing. It is all just emotion in the end. And any of it can make you weep. — Nick Hornby

He finally pulled it all back into his heart, sucking in the painful tide of his misery. In the Glade, Chuck had become a symbol for him - a beacon that somehow they could make everything right again in the world. Sleep in beds. Get kissed goodnight. Have bacon and eggs for breakfast, go to a real school. Be happy.
But now Chuck was gone. And his limp body, to which Thomas still clung, seemed a cold talisman - that not only would those dreams of a hopeful future never come to pass, but that life had never been that way in the first place. That even in escape, dreary days lay ahead. A life of sorrow.
His returning memories were sketchy at best. But not much good floated in the muck.
Thomas reeled in the pain, locked it somewhere deep inside him. He did it for Teresa. For Newt and Minho. Whatever darkness awaited them, they'd be together, and that was all that mattered right then. — James Dashner

I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration. — Michael Parkinson

Do they know when we are well and happy? do they know when we recall their memories with the fondest love? In the silent hour of evening the shade of my mother hovers around me; when seated in the midst of my children, I see them assembled near me, as they used to assemble near her; and then I raise my anxious eyes to heaven, and wish she could look down upon us, and witness how I fulfil the promise I made to her in her last moments, to be a mother to her children. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?"
"It may be for some, father, but not for us. Axl and I wish to have again the happy moments we shared together. To be robbed of them is as if a thief came in the night and took what's most precious from us."
"Yet the mist covers all memories, the bad as well as the good. Isn't that so, mistress?"
"We'll have the bad ones come back too, even if they make us weep or shake with anger. For isn't it the life we've shared? — Kazuo Ishiguro

To all that come to this happy place, welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America ... with hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. — Walt Disney Company

It doesn't matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I don't need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I've learned that for hoarders, every cleanup is a grieving process. We are asking them to say goodbye to items that are heavy with memories - some wonderful, some painful. But all are important and deserve respect. A hoarder finds safety in the hoard, in the stacks and piles, and he or she will grieve over the loss of those items when they are gone. The week after the house cleaning is usually the worst. Instead of being happy and enjoying the new space, hoarders go through a difficult process. They miss their possessions, which were their closest friends for years. — Matt Paxton

Your presence we will always miss, but the memories I will treasure, we had some happy times dear friend knowing you was a gift of pleasure. — Susan Smith

Wishing you a happy birthday with all those special things, the things which make memories and for all the happiness it brings. — Susan Smith

Invest in building a happy life. Create a portfolio of memories. Those are the most valuable assets. They're priceless investments. And they'll never go down in value. — Todd Saville

Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something else ... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering today. This place is dear to me already. I have already two or three such places in Petersburg. I once shed tears over memories ... like you ... Who knows, perhaps you were weeping ten minutes ago over some memory ... But, forgive me, I have forgotten myself again; perhaps you have once been particularly happy here ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You can be sad recalling sad times, but if you really want to be sad, recall happy times. — Robert Breault

To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. — Frederick E. Crane

It's one of my biggest memories of my father reading. I had pneumonia, remember, but I was a little better now, and madly caught up in the book, and one thing you know when you're ten is that, no matter what, there's gonna be a happy ending. They can sweat all they want to scare you, the authors, but back of it all you know, you just have no doubt, that in the long run justice is going to win out. — William Goldman

Tis true what Hemingway says--if we're lucky enough to live our dreams in youth, as Ernest Hemingway did in 1920's Paris and I did with the Beat poets, then youth's dreams become a moveable feast you take wherever you go--youthful love remains the repast plentiful; exquisite, substantive and good. You can live on happy memories. Eat of them forever. — Alison Winfield Burns

I try to remember the things that keep me peaceful, happy, and compassionate. I constantly write notes on my phone about little discoveries I make in terms of perspective and habitual thought patterns. My memory seems to let me down, so this really helps me. — Richard Brancatisano

The little house is not too small
To shelter friends who come to call.
Though low the roof and small its space
It holds the Lord's abounding grace,
And every simple room may be
Endowed with happy memory.
The little house, severly plain,
A wealth of beauty may contain.
Within it those who dwell may find
High faith which makes for peace of mind,
And that sweet understanding which
Can make the poorest cottage rich.
The little house can hold all things
From which the soul's contentment springs.
'Tis not too small for love to grow,
For all the joys that mortals know,
For mirth and song and that delight
Which make the humblest dwelling bright. — Edgar A. Guest

Happy people have neither age nor memory, they have no need of the past. — Tahar Djaout

May today be a happy memory, tomorrow a bright new promise. Happy Birthday — Rob Jackson

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives. — Alexander McCall Smith

My memories of literary agenting are of a very happy time and there are surprising reminders of it coming back now. — John Hodgman

If you're gonna cry, cry because of all the good times we had, and all the laughs, and all the fun shit we did, and cry because those memories make you happy. — James Frey

As I glanced around my room, sliding my dinosaur back and forth on its chain, I though that maybe that was the point--that instead of happy endings, you get beginnings. Hundreds of little beginnings happening every moment, each of them layering into histories deep and tangled and new, histories you count on to remain, no matter what changes the world throws at you. — Meg Leder

But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain. — Rohinton Mistry

We can never found the soul, just as we can never wound God, but we become imprisoned by our memories, and that makes our lives wretched, even when we have everything we need in order to be happy. — Paulo Coelho

Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger. — Rosamunde Pilcher

The best place for discovering what a man is is the heart of the desert. Your plane has broken down, and you walk for hours, heading for the little fort at Nutchott. You wait for the mirages of thirst to gape before you. But you arrive and you find an old sergeant who has been isolated for months among the dunes, and he is so happy to be found that he weeps. And you weep, too. In the arching immensity of the night, each tells the story of his life, each offers the other the burden of memories in which the human bond is discovered. Here two men can meet, and they bestow gifts upon each other with the dignity of ambassadors. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

What magic was this, brewed from equal parts of age-old memories and total oblivion. One could have believed that the last war these people had fought had left only happy memories, had carried in its wake nothing but joy and prosperity. Women and girls were smiling as if their sons and lovers were invulnerable. — Anna Seghers